Still Waiting
by firstadream
Summary: "I have been in love with Seeley Booth for six years, two months, and twelve days..." Booth and Brennan's relationship from the eyes of an outsider. B/B fluff!


**Another random fluff piece! How cool is that? Pretty cool.**

_Still Waiting_

I have been in love with Seeley Booth for six years, two months, and twelve days. Now, you probably read that first line and thought to yourself, "Okay, this chick's a mega-stalker." Believe me, I'd think the same thing too, but I actually have a pretty good explanation for the extreme specificity.

I met Seeley on my son's third birthday party. Tommy and Parker attended the same daycare and Seeley was the one who dropped him off for the party. Hence the stalkerish exactness about the length of my unrequited love affair with Seeley. I normally don't write down the exact date every time I meet a guy, but in this case, the date was my son's birthday, so if I really want to, I can always calculate to the day, how long this crush has lasted. Which is six years, two months, and twelve days.

I wouldn't call myself a shy person, but for some reason, I never got up the guts to ask Seeley out. At first, it was out of respect. I could tell that there was still some unresolved stuff between him and Becca when we first met and who am I to come between a family? After that, it was out of consideration. Who jumps on a guy right after he breaks up with the mother of his child? And then it was because of her.

Right around the time I'd finally convinced myself to suck it up and ask the guy out, I saw them together. They were sitting in the park on a bench. They were just talking, but there was something oddly…intimate about it. They were sitting close together, their bodies angled toward each other. She was saying something and he was paying attention—I mean really focusing on her words. Which, in my book, means something. I can't count the number of times I've been on a date telling a story and the guy I'm with is way more tuned into my breasts than my voice. But he wasn't doing that. He was listening to her. And it made me want to cry, because I wanted him to look at _me _the way he was looking at her.

The next time I saw Becca after the incident in the park, I asked her, as casually as I could, if Seeley was seeing anybody. She said he wasn't, but I eventually found out that he had just been assigned a new partner, some forensic anthropologist slash best selling author. Temperance something. That night, I googled her. It turns out there aren't many famous forensic anthropologists named Temperance, so the search was relatively easy. Plus, there were like a billion websites that mentioned her. She even had her own fan site. I mean, I'm not a terribly insecure girl, but I'm a second grade teacher, with a relatively dull wardrobe, and, on mornings when I'm being honest with myself, flat hair.

She wasn't like that at all. It was no wonder the World Wide Web was enamored with her. She was gorgeous and brilliant to boot. How could I ever compete? She was pretty much a man's dream. More importantly, she was _his_ dream.

The next time I saw them together was about a year later in the Royal Diner. I walked in with a friend and saw them seated at a table by the window. He seemed to be trying to make her take a bite of his apple pie, but she was having none of it. He was holding it out to her and she was laughing and pushing it away. I heard her say something about not liking her fruit cooked and to that he replied, "I know, Bones."

"Bones," I thought to myself. "Great. She has a nickname. Kill me now."

I tried to ignore them after that and pretty much succeeded until they got up to leave. As they passed my table, he glanced over and recognized me, something I was both hoping for and dreading. "Sarah!" he said. He seemed happy to see me, but he was probably just being polite.

"Seeley, hi!" I said. "It's good to see you." I gestured towards my friend. "This is my friend, Caroline."

He smiled at her, then reached behind him for Temperance. He slipped his arm around her waist and tugged her forward. "This is, Bo—Dr. Brennan. My partner."

I shook her hand and tried to smile in what appeared to be a convincing way. "Nice to meet you."

"You too," she said.

The conversation was short-lived after that. Just the obligatory questions and answers, a couple of awkward silences and they were gone. Once they were out the door, Caroline turned to me, her eyebrows raised. "Is that the guy?" I nodded. "He is _fine_."

"Tell me about," I mumbled.

I saw him again a couple of days later. I was heading into a Starbucks; he was heading out, _two _coffees in hand, a detail that I didn't escape my notice and gave endless ammunition to the jealousy fest going on in my head. After the usual pleasantries, I asked, "How long have you and Dr. Brennan been dating?"

Which I thought was a pretty normal question, but he had the weirdest reaction to it. He kind of coughed. Shook his head. "Oh, no," he said roughly, like he was choking on the words. "We're just partners."

"Oh," I said and tried to still my wildly beating heart. "Well she seems really nice. I love her books." I hadn't actually read her books, but who was going to find out?

"Yeah, she's…" He trailed off and glanced away for a second. "She's really something."

That's when I knew he was in love with her.

_"But he said they weren't dating!"_ you might say.

And to that, I would answer, "But you didn't see his face."

You can tell everything from someone's face. And in that moment, his face was all about her. I could just see it. In that split second when he was thinking about her and only her, his eyes brightened, his lips quirked. He was a man in love.

The next time I saw them together, I tried to see signs that she felt the same. It was at a peewee soccer game. Tommy and Parker weren't on the same team, but they were in the same league, so they played each other every once in a while. I usually loved those games, because I got to talk to Seeley for a period of time longer than five minutes. But on that day, I was in a bad mood to say the least.

He had brought her and they were standing about twenty feet away from me. He appeared to be explaining the rules of the game to her. He would point at something every once in a while and she would nod, smile sometimes. I hated her. Not only because the guy I was in love with was in love with her, but also because she seemed to be completely oblivious. Now and then, he'd fall silent and just look at her as she watched the game. His lips would curve into the softest, sweetest smile as his eyes roamed her face, and she wouldn't even notice. She'd inevitably break the spell by asking some question and he'd snap out of his reverie to answer it and she would listen, apparently still completely ignorant about his undying devotion for her.

There's always this moment near the end of the third quarter when the sun starts to go down and it gets really chilly. Usually, this just means that I pull out my second sweater, but on that day, it meant something far more painful. As I slipped into my fleece, I glanced over at them and noticed that she was shivering slightly. I won't deny it, a part of me was a little glad that she was cold. I think the words that went through my mind at the moment were "serves you right, bitch", but my inner joy quickly faded when I watched him shrug out of his jacket and drape it across her shoulders.

Don't laugh at me, but in that moment, I pretended I was her. I imagined the sudden warmth pervading my body as he wrapped the jacket around me. I imagined his smell drifting around me, all outdoorsy and comforting and Seeley. I imagined him giving my shoulders a squeeze and whispering, "Feel better?" to me, which I'm sure was what he whispered to her when he bent close to her ear.

I sighed and looked away. Watching the two of them together made me physically ill. It made me want the stupid soccer game to end already so I could put my son to bed and cry myself to sleep to the tunes of Joni Mitchell. But instead I was forced to sit and watch them for exactly thirteen more minutes. Thirteen more minutes filled with him whispering in her ear and standing behind her to block the wind. Thirteen more minutes of her laughing and smiling and captivating him. It was horrible.

When the ref finally blew the whistle, I whisked my son into the car and prayed that I wouldn't have to see them together ever again. And I didn't for a long time. God kept my wish for just over five years, and by then my love for him had dulled to say the least. Becca told me when he shipped off to Afghanistan. She told when he came back a year later. I saw him in passing just a few days after he came home. He was thinner, a little worn out maybe, but just as handsome as ever. He didn't recognize me, or he didn't see me. Either way, we didn't talk. And the next time I saw him, I didn't really want to talk.

It was at another soccer game when I saw them together again. I knew something was different the moment I looked at them. For one, they were holding hands. But there was something else. Something in the way she looked at him, told me that she'd figured it out, that she'd seen his love for her, and found her own love for him.

They stood on the sidelines, a few feet down from me. He wrapped his arm around her and she leaned into him, a smile gracing her lips as she watched Parker run past. He kissed the top of her head and she glanced up at him. Said something that made him hold her tighter. Kiss her softly. Kiss her in the way I'd always wished to be kissed.

I tried not to dwell on it. I had an amazing son and a kind man that I'd been dating for a few months. I admit, a part of me was still jealous. But it wasn't so much because I wanted him. At that point, it was more because I wanted what they had. They were soul mates. You might laugh, but if you only saw what I saw, saw the way he looked at her like she was what he was living for, you'd probably agree with me. They were best friends, partners, and lovers. They'd found each other and here I was with my boring clothes and flat hair, still waiting.

**So, sad ending for Sarah, but a happy ending for B&B and that's all that we really care about, right? Right! **

**Hey! Don't give me that self-righteous look! You know it's true! **

**But even if you don't think it's true, you should still review, because I gave you more fluff, which makes me awesome and deserving of some love. :) **


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